FAQ TV Sets

HDTV is short for High Definition Television. It is intended to bring high resolutions to television. It has become and continues to become a worldwide standard for digital TV.


Compared to conventional television, HDTV offers the following advantages:

- higher amount of (visible) lines
- higher resolutions (up to 1920 x 1080
- different aspect ratio (5:3 and 16:9)

Several formats have been defined for HDTV. The most common formats of them are:

• 720p - 1280 x 720 pixels progressive
• 1080i - 1920 x 1080 pixels interlaced
• 1080p - 1920 x 1080 pixels progressive

The following graphic should give an impression about the difference in resolution between the different TV standards NTSC, PAL and HDTV.



There are 3 different modes that can be used for displaying HDTV:
When progressive mode (p) is used, all lines are saved within a complete frame. In psF mode (progressive segmented frame), all lines are distributed over two simultaneous half frames. The interlaced mode (i) distributes all lines over two half frames consecutive in time.

Quality wise, there is virtually no visible difference between p and psF. Their picture quality corresponds to a full frame.

It HDTV is not going to made use of optimally until there are TV set that a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels at least. Currently, almost all of the prevalent LCD TVs work at a native resolution of 1280 x 720 only.

Please a more in-depth look and further information on this topic, read our special on HDTV.